The children, in church several hours before being nestled all snug in their beds under brand-new blankets crocheted by their great-grandmother. I sit here in front of a 6' tree fairly dwarfed by piles of presents, nibbling on Santa's caramel crunch cookie and the reindeers' carrot, sipping the former's frosty bubbly cocktail (what? Santa doesn't get a mimosa at your house?) secure in the knowledge that sugarplums have likely begun dancing in their heads and I may take a moment to blog.

After the 4 p.m. service we drove around a bit, looking at lights and meandering our way to a nearby Chinese place for dinner. The kids were amused by waiters wearing Santa hats and the restuarant's gift to us of a 2007 calendar - cool enough to warrant fighting over and the quick intervention by one waiter in rushing a second to our table. We took a little detour through Brainiac's childhood neighborhood on the way home and were charmed by luminaria in front of most of the houses. He tells me that this has been going on since he was quite young and he became both sad and joyous as we drove, enjoying his children's exclamations from the backseat while also remembering his late father's role in setting up the luminaria that his family displayed. It's an odd place in which we find ourselves, still feeling as if we ought to eat at the kids' table and not yet finished being parented but now also parents ourselves. Christmas seems to make this neither-here-nor-there quality bolder, somehow, more stark.

And now we are home. The carrot and cocktail are gone, the last verses of Barbra Streisand's Ave Maria have faded from my little Pandora set-up, and Brainiac is pouring me a Frangelico. So.

We most definitely did not have a silent night, although in many ways it did feel holy. The gift of the blankets made by my kids' oldest relative, remembering to them a grandfather they never met, eating dumplings together as part of a tradition their father and I started before they were born and now sharing a drink and cigar with Brainiac as we putter away the remaining hours of Christmas Eve...yes, there has been something very holy in the day we shared.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

When my sisters and I were young our mother was a Cake Lady. You know who I mean, every town has at least one. She was the woman that other moms would turn to for their Holly Hobby, Mickey Mouse and Garfield cake needs (those of you who weren't alive in the late 70s/early 80s would be surprised at just how large those needs were - and this was before the surge in children's party character licensing we see today when it's possible to find a pan for the most obscure of interests and virtually every movie short of Boogie Nights). She made wedding cakes, Christening cakes, graduation cakes, end-of-softball-season cakes and other confections in such numbers that my memories of childhood are practically themselves sugarcoated. It was rare that there wasn't a cake around either baking, being decorated, cautiously carried to the car for delivery or cast aside as a dud. We got the duds in our lunchboxes.

Our friends, of course, thought this was fabulous. Cake all the time! What's not to love? Except, of course, constant exposure even to the awesome dulls and after a while we collectively stopped eating much cake at all. Duds sat around uneaten and undesired until they hardened sufficiently that they could be thrown out without the attendant guilt of wasting food and, once it became possible by the early 90s to buy an airbrushed cake in virtually every supermarket, mom gradually went into Cake Lady retirement.

Among the legacies of my cake-filled youth is the ability to produce simple icings for almost any requirement without a recipe or really much thought at all. Mom never taught me (she preferred to keep her kitchen to herself) but somewhere along the line I - and perhaps my sisters, too - picked up all kinds of frostings from glazes to the less tasty but more substantial decorator icing, suitable for roses and borders and other things you need to keep their shape. Come to think of it, the only "icing" I can't make from memory is fondant, which I suspect is because Mom disapproves of fondant and seldom consented to its use.

Last night I made the following chocolate icing for brownies for the Boy Wonder's school holiday party. Recipes for chocolate icing abound and there are probably at least three for everyone who has ever made any - I, of course, think mine is the best. I also think it's the easiest, a feature not to be underestimated as far as I'm concerned, especially this time of year when we're all so busy. This is a general-purpose spreading icing, suitable for brownies, a layer cake, sugar cookies or - let's be honest withourselves here - just spooning directly from the bowl into the mouth. You may see some recipes that require cooking, evaporated milk, separating eggs and so on and while these may produce perfectly pleasant icings I assure you that they are all unnecessary.

For a nice, general-use chocolate frosting, soften a quarter-cup of butter in a mixing bowl. When nicely softened (you can press a finger into the butter with little resistance), add a one pound box of confectioner's sugar and, say, a cup of cocoa powder. Start adding milk (I use 1%, but used both skim and whole successfully) slooooowly, about a tablespoon at a time until the frosting starts to form. Keep adding the milk until you get the consistency you like. If you accidentally add too much milk, mix in more sugar or cocoa powder. Taste liberally! It'll help you adjust the ingredients to get to where you want to be. Some folks like to add a pinch of salt and a bit of vanilla - I find them superfluous but, hey, it's your icing. Your frosted baked goods can sit out overnight or a couple days covered - the sugar and chocolate keep the milk and butter nicely protected for a short time.

Mom comes out of retirement every so often, mostly to make wedding cakes. These she has made for each of my sisters and me, as well as our friends who remember the birthday cakes she made for their own childhood parties. As even the youngest of our girlhood friends is now in her 30s these wedding cakes are becoming fewer and further between and her stretches of retirement longer and longer. The cake-filled bits of our lives exist now primarily in photographs and the ability to make almost any kind of icing, whenever we need that fix of memory combined with necessity. All except that fondant, of course.

More Fragments

I have an entry in this week's Carnival of Homeschooling - it's the Nutcracker post from a few days ago. I entered the Carnival with this post specifically because 1) we continue to think through this education business and 2) I liked the lesson I learned from the whole episode, sometimes the kids will take an interest in something I would never have imagined. This is something I need to remember as we think about our next steps.


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You may have noticed the ticker on the right-hand margin counting the numbers of pre-approved credit offers we've received since the end of November. Seriously, there were maybe three or four arriving every day and it was all so ridiculous that I felt the numbers needed to be documented somehow. Of course, within days of posting the arriving offers slowed markedly and I almost took the counter down. I needn't have worried, for their once again filling our mailbox to astonishing levels. Yesterday brought another three. At least we received more Christmas cards than that, or I might have been depressed.


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Thank you for the help and advice regarding our bus driver's gift. I am going with the gift card and note, as originally planned. I do not know why this caused so much angst for me, other than I guess I need to have at least one gift-related freak-out every year or it just isn't Christmas.

Usually the freak-outs are related to my mother, my father or Brainiac. My sisters are fairly easy to buy for (and I'm not just saying that because one of them reads here) - they have a wide variety of interests and don't fuss about bigness or smallness or whatever. I have given my sisters all kind of things, from silly to sentimental, from thrifted to spendy and by and large I think I've done o.k.

Shopping for my mom is hard because she's an world-class shopper of the highest, black-belt order and usually buys herself what see wants almost immediately upon seeing it ("If I wait for a sale, it'll be gone!" is her frequent refrain). Selecting gifts for my dad can be hard because most of the things he'd really enjoy I can't afford (like really old Scotch, vintage golf clubs, greens fees at some fancy-pants club). And Brainiac wants only one thing badly - a pilot's license - but I just can't seem to come up with the many hundreds of dollars monthly that such an endeavor requires. Besides, a pilot's license is kind of like a naked Barbie - pointless and no fun without the further investment of capital in things like actually flying planes/clothes and Dreamhouse.

But this year everyone except the bus drive was covered nicely so I guess my freak-out needed reassignment. And now there's no freak-out at all.

Fragments

Despite my assertion that I would neither read nor acknowledge the Boy Wonder's BMI report, out neighborhood elementary school has proven too wily for to avoid/ignore it as planned. The magic number has been reported on the same piece of paper alongside information I actually do need, like his vision results (as the child of two glasses-wearing parents, with three glasses-wearing aunts/uncles and four glasses-wearing grandparents, we're always on the lookout for the need for corrective lenses). So. There it is. Hm.

And that's really all that needs to be said about that.

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I am breaking up with Target. This has been a long time coming and I really do feel that it's time I see other stores. I'm a little sad, of course, but also hopeful that with time I will be able to see our relationship with a bit more clarity. In the meantime, I am engaging in some retail therapy with several yards of this to be made into little paper-sack type evening bags and an ever-so-small spree at Crane buying New Years cards and perusing the offerings for the household stationery that Brainiac is always saying we should order.

I feel better already.

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There remains only one gift to arrange here at the Hot Water Bath estate and that is for the lovely young woman who drives the bus that delivers the Boy Wonder to school every day (how it came to pass that he takes the bus at all is a story in itself but believe me when I say that he is thrilled and I am somewhat less so). Anyway, he is one of three children on this route so it's more that he has this personal transportation service and the Boy tells us how they all sing songs on the way to school and she sings along with them. Nice, no? So I've already written a card expressing our heartfelt thanks that she is so kind to the children and how grateful we are that she keeps them safe and sound in the time they are in her care (not to mention that she is the absolute perfect driver for the parents who were terrified to put their kid on a bus).

I would like to enclose a little something with the card but I can't think of what that little something ought to be. I know nothing about her other than she sings songs and is quite diligent about safety, if the Boy's stories are to be believed. I don't know if she likes wine or cookies (or is even able to enjoy either). I don't know if she likes movies or reading or knitting or even celebrates any given winter gift-giving holiday at all, for that matter. She does wear a handful of silver rings which I see when she waves to me as the bus leaves off. But jewelry? No. Definitely not appropriate.

It flitted through my mind that I might buy a gift card to a local market and add to our note that I hoped she'd buy herself some of her favorite wintertime treats and enjoy them with our thanks, but...is that very icky-ticky-tacky? Or is this a good idea?

Do tell. I'm begging for help here so please share.

Not long ago I was having One of Those Days. The kids were very tightly wound, I was somewhat less so and all efforts at a pleasant family morning were coming to naught. As I do every now and again I announced Quiet Time by saying, "Why don't you guys go see what's on channel 12?!" (Channel 12 is one of the two parentally sanctioned watching options in our house, our local public broadcasting.)

You can imagine my surprise to notice maybe five minutes later the calm that had descended. No more arguing, picking, instigating, throwing, screaming, tattling - it had all stopped. I was almost afraid to go check and see what it was they found on the television in case I would feel compelled to declare it inappropriate viewing and turn it off, with the inevitable result of a return to the morning's chaos. Steeling myself against bitter cathode ray dissapointment, I walked into the play room to find the kids snuggled up on the futon with a fleece blanket, staring rapt at the screen watching...

The Nutcracker.

I sat down to watch with them, remembering well my own girlhood fascination with Gelsey Kirkland and my despair at growing too tall and too, uh, large for ballet (my stature is rather more suited to softball than ballet). I wondered what they'd make of the show, if children more accustomed to animation and Disney spectacle would find The Nutcracker as compelling as so many generations before them.

They did. I provided minimal narration, just enough to help them follow the story and secretly (well, less so now that I'm writing about it on my blog, I guess) was pleased that they displayed such cultah in their attention. It was a distinct pleasure to share with them a holiday tradition that I enjoyed so well at their age.

Of course, when the ballet ended we were right back to craziness, this time with re-enactments of battles with the Mouse King, a part they alternated for maximum hysteria. Ah, so much for culture.

Still, happening upon The Nutcracker seems to have had an effect on them that I doubt it would have had if I had sat them down specifically to watch it, maybe a sense of discovery or ownership rather than something that Mom said was important to do. Both relish telling the story to friends and family, as if it were something that they themselves created and Entropy Girl practices her "steps" daily and asks her brother to play the part of the "guy dancer". The Boy Wonder is amazed to note that the male dancers can jump just as high as football players and thinks it beyond cool that battle scenes are not at all unusual within ballet - jumping with swords! Not to mention, of course, the constant source of amazement in the Christmas tree that grows! On stage! Or that so many dancers can do the same things at the same time, his constant search for synchronicity and symmetry satisfied. I am utterly charmed by their enthusiasm in a way that only a mother could be.

So now I'm on the hunt for Nutcracker-themed activities. I found a few at the Pennsylvania Ballet and, because they are intended for older children, they've inspired me to create a couple of my own - a wordsearch, an I Spy-type page and a bit of time making sugarplums.

It has been a wonderful gift for me to be able to share The Nutcracker with the kids and have them enjoy it so much. Despite knowing that the odds are against them developing a lifelong appreciate for dance, living as we do in the age of Wii, I'd like to think that the memory of this time will stay with them and someday, at least, they'll be able to share a little of the wonder with their own children.

(If you'd like me to send you .PDF copies of our Nutcracker games and activities, e-mail me at hotwaterbath AT gmail DOT com and I'll get them out to you. They're nothing super elaborate, just a bit of holiday fun to take advantage of youthful enthusiasm.)

Among Brainiac's many charms is that he is an ace gift giver. He has given me all kinds of wonderful presents in our 16 years together - a perfectly red lipstick, lovely earrings, books, music, travel and all kinds of other squee-worthy delights. And he doesn't just pick cool things - sometimes things I didn't even know I wanted - but he's into cool presentation, too. After one particularly tough year of living in separate cities and commuting back and forth on weekends, Brainiac gave me a cruise so that we could spend a solid block of relaxing, sun-drenched time together. Under the tree that year I found a child's bathtub boat, little and red, spiffed up with stickers of smiling faces marked "Brainiac" and "Marsha" and a note attached announing our upcoming trip. Last year brought a letter from Santa himself,on North Pole letterhead letting me know that Brainiac had informed him of my exceptional goodness and his desire that Santa should deliver a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. .

Because of the impending move and rather rustic kitchen arrangements awaiting me in the new house, Santa thought it best to hold off on the mixer's actual delivery. In the meantime, Brainiac has installed a dishwasher, replaced the countertop, put in more lighting and just generally improved cooking conditions. And, true to his word, Santa delivered the mixer about a week ago. Yesterday, I used it to mix up cookie dough.

Squee-worthy, indeed.

I made a precious few cookies last year, just the basics without which Christmas would have felt less-than to me. This year, with my brand new (and lightening fast) mixer at the ready, I am feeling a touch more ambitious. Cookie goals for this year include everything from last year as well as tea cakes, peanut butter kisses, regular old peanut butter, oatmeal cranberry (the red of the cranberry is a cool festive change from raisons), shortbread (I use teeny tiny cutters on these so each baking sheet holds scores - very fun), snickerdoodles, rum balls, those coconut and chocolar bar things, linzer torte-type cookies, and probably more. Maybe some fudge? And brownies? And cake? Mama's got a new mixer, after all.

You may have heard about the Kraft Guacamole Kerkuffle of 2006. Then again, maybe not - the upshot is that a woman in Los Angeles was upset to find that the Kraft guacamole she bought to serve friends contains virtually no avocado. Modified food starch, skim milk, green food coloring, sure, but just a teensy bit (like 2%) avocado.

So what's a girl to do when her industrially-produced snack dip disappoints? Apparently, a girl sues. (ETA: It appears that our little claimant may not be unassisted in her search for Truth Justice and the Guacamole Way. Check out the link at the bottom of this encouraging potential avocado litigants to fill out a complaint about their guacamole disappointments which will then be evaulated by a lawyer "at no charge".)

A friend with whom I was discussing the matter maintains that Kraft is 100% in the wrong with this one, that their labeling practices were/are deceptive and that the entire company should be force fed authentic guacamole until it comes out their collective ears. I think the woman in question must be a bit loco at the least and perhaps even a bit mercenary (Hey! I know, Kraft has lots of, uh, dough! I'll sue them!) at the worst.

Goodness knows I prefer real, minimally-processed food as much as the next girl and I certainly know the disappointment and d'oh feelings that come with finding out that something you're eating isn't quite what you thought it was (go ahead, ask me about the red dye #40 I poured down the Boy Wonder's gullet in the form of YOGURT! or the high fructose corn syrup we ingested that had been disguised as salsa) but here's the thing: we have labeling laws and Kraft followed them. The information that would have prevented this consumer from purchasing the "guac" was available and clearly printed just as it is for nearly every food product commercially available in every supermarket in the country. Just as I fell down on the job not perusing our yogurt for dyes, this woman made an assumption about a specialty product produced by a decidedly non-specialty mass-market company. No where did craft ever claim "chock full of perfectly ripe, totally healthy avocados!".

And, purely as an aside, this person lives in Los Angeles! You cannot tell me that she had no access to freshly made, wonderful guacamole. Really. Los Angeles, people. Sheesh.

Anyway, whatever. I'm no fan of Kraft in general but I really don't think they did anything wrong here. Most of us know that "juice cocktail" isn't really juice and fruit roll-ups aren't really fruit, boxed mac-and-cheese generally doesn't have cheese (ironically, Kraft's famous blue and yellow boxed mac-and-cheese used to actually be the "cheesiest" as their ads went, but I recall reading recently that it now contains next to no cheese, a nod to cost-reduction) and candy corn isn't corn. Do we really need a lawsuit to establish that the mass-market, shelf-stable guacamole really isn't?

Guacamole is super easy to make. And for everyone who has ever made their own, there are probably scores of recipes. I usually use two dead-ripe avocados (they need to be softer than what you'd use sliced on a sandwich) smashed with a fork, the juice of a lime or two, some finely chopped onion and garlic, some chopped tomato, a spot each of salt and ground cumin (freshly ground, if you can), a bit of chopped cilantro and, heck, maybe a bit of cayenne. Basically, make it with whatever you have around. If I'm pressed for time I'll just mix up a bit of salsa with the smashed avocado and then some lime juice.

Like so many things, guacamole is a matter of taste and preference. If you don't care for colored food starch, read your labels and shop accordingly.

I was having yet another What To Make For Dinner conversation with a friendly acquaintance when I mentioned that I really wanted to make biscuits to go with that night's chili but didn't have time so I'd probably make beer bread instead. At this she looked at me as if I had just told her I would feed my kids braised glass for dinner.

"You make beer bread?" she asked, "How? Isn't that worse than making biscuits?" She shuddered and added a comment on her devotion to whack-'em tubes of crescent rolls.

There may well be a hard way to make beer bread but if there is I don't know about it. The way my mom taught me is crazy easy (strangely, although she gave me the recipe and method I use - which Google shows as the most common - I have no memory of her ever making a loaf). Once I told my pal how to do it, her eyes brightened and she said she'd make some just as soon as she could get her hands on some self-rising flour, that not being the kind of thing that many of us keep around. Seems she got the idea after having some beer bread fondue at a local pub that it was hard to make, required lots of tedious kneading and resting as so many breads do and that the process is just generally harder than whacking a tube of prefab rolls.

Not so. Beer bread is more of a quick bread than anything else, and there's no kneading required. In fact, I'd venture to say that in a reasonably well-ordered kitchen, whipping up a loaf of beer bread might well be just as fast or even more so than whacking and separating refigerator rolls.

For crazy easy beer bread, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Mix well three cups of self-rising flour, three tablespoons of white sugar and 12 oz. of beer (canned or bottled, whatever type you like - cheap beer makes just as good a bread as expensive, but every beer adds a distinct flavor, we prefer lighter beers for bread). Pat the sticky dough into an oiled or sprayed loaf pan and bake for one hour. Allow to cool a spell before cutting. You can use regular flour, too, but add three teaspoons baking powder and a teaspoon and a half of salt - things that self-rising flour already includes. Since a five pound bag of self-rising is fairly inexpensive and makes several loaves, I don't bother with the more complicated version. As always, your mileage may vary, blah, blah, blah.

Sure, the bread must bake for an hour but that's an hour when you can be off doing something else and not standing by the stove or watching the clock for kneading intervals. Since not being subject to any kind of drudgery is a key to enjoying the cooking process, I don't think the ability to ignore the bread for a whole hour can be over-regarded. If you have leftover, let it harden over night and crunch it up to make breadcrumbs to coat tomorrow night's chicken breasts (which you'll put out to thaw tonight) and there is another evening's dinner already planned and ready to go.

So, if you just celebrated Thanksgiving, did you have a nice holiday?

If you didn't, did you have a nice Thursday?

The kids, their au pair and I arrived home Thursday night after nearly a week away visiting relatives in more northern locales. We enjoyed snow flurries, learning a Russian card game called Durac, eating too much coffee cake and TimBits, and hearing about my 80 year-old grandmother's new boyfriend. It was a lovely vacation in every respect.

Still, it's nice to be home. I missed my own bed and my own kitchen, however ill-equipped it is. And after Brainiac told me about the holes he cut in the ceiling above my desk (ostensibly to fix a leak from the bathtub above but he sounded as if he enjoyed making those holes so much that I'm not at all convinced it took him the three tries he claims it did to find the leak - I think he just wanted to cut more holes in the ceiling) I knew that much work would be required to put the house to some level of order for the upcoming holidays.

So with post-trip laundry underway, a kitchen enhancement project about to start, boxes of all sizes siting about waiting for me to unpack their festive contents, four pounds of butter thawing for the first batches of Christmas cookies (chocolate chip, crinkles and probably pizzelles since I have a lot of eggs on hand) and a glass of wine at my side as I type I feel very ready for Advent.

Among the many, uh, charms of being involved with the public school machine in Pennsylvania is the requirement that every child in certain grades (K through fourth now, expanding each year by adding a grade until every grade is included) has a BMI measurement, which is sent home to parents along with lots of helpful advice about what to do should one's child's BMI be deemed not quite right. This program, called the PA Growth Screening Program, is a joint effort of the Pennsylvania Departments of Health and Education.

At first blush, this sounds no different than other screenings a child might receive in school (remember visiting the nurse's office for that annual scoliosis finger-down-the-back check?). And, indeed, that's exactly how the program is being marketed - no different than, say, a vision or hearing assessment or other useful tool for parents to use in evaluating their child's health.

From my perspective, this is a far cry from a vision or hearing evaluation. A very far cry.

The program literature includes boilerplate letters to parents, administrators and staff outlining the procedures and what will happen after the BMI measurements have been obtained. While the literature includes areas where school nurses may detail the ways in which the school and district are endeavoring to create healthier environments for kids - and, indeed, offers suggestions to nurses of ideas they might pursue in this regard - the program itself is not designed to offer solutions. So it's entirely possible that parents may recieve a letter that reads something along the lines of "Hey, your kids' BMI is XX. Good luck with that!"

So we have this measurement sent to parents, with the explanation that false readings are possible and that it should be discussed with the family physician and included alongside are all the ways that the school district is going to help keep/get the child healthy/-ier (one hopes, but maybe/maybe not on this point). The thing is, if I actually have a physician (assumed by the literature), why do I need this? If I am already required to submit a physical form filled out for each child by that same physician as a requirement of enrollment, what is this duplicative screening meaning to accomplish?

I also wonder the point of such a screening in an environment where children recieve 15 minutes a day per lunch (as is the case at my neighborhood elementary school), a 10 minute recess if they're lucky, and gym class once every six days. If the message of the Growth Screening Program is to encourage healthy eating and activity, isn't that diluted somewhat by the day-to-day message kids receive while actually at school? On the one hand, parents may learn that their son or daughter is over-/underweight but why bother to tell them what they likely already know when they have no control over a schedule that teaches those same children to either shove their food down their throats as quickly as possible just to finish or that they couldn't possibly finish so why bother eating when you can just go to the library and get something done?

I'm also troubled by the program's lack of attention to common root causes of both under- and overweight. Among the suggestions that school nurses ask the local YMCA what programs might be available for overweight kids and find sports programs to recommend there is no attention paid to helping families who need assistance in obtaining affordable healthy food, finding living situations that include kitchen facilities in which to cook and store said healthy food, or providing support for families when kids themselves are responsible for preparing their own meals because mom and dad are working long hours or otherwise aren't home (by whether by choice or necessity). Not to mention all the other issues that go into a family's food environment - maybe mom will only eat yogurt and lettuce or dad feels that a meal without meat is like a day without sunshine, etc. Or the prevailing model of the upwardly mobile, achievement-oriented family in which everyone is off accomplishing and no one is eating so much as a single meal together in any given week. Or that the very schools that are being required to conduct the screenings offer sports programs - hey! healthy activity! - that require kids to be away from their own family tables four or five nights a week. Or that even if we fixed all of what I see as our society's really weird attitudes toward food, we still won't teach people how to cook. (Insert your own neurosis here.)

(ETA: On the drive to pick the Boy up from school just after posting this I realized that today is the school's Market Day pick up. Market Day products are sold as a PTA fundraiser and the order/pick-up cycle runs monthly. Among the plain frozen veggies on offer are frozen french toast sticks, tacquitos, cheesesteak "kits" and bagel pizzas. And this month moms - there's that mom being responsible for feeding people thing again - were encouraged to by as many pies as possible since the company offered an extra $1 per pie profit to the school. Not all that compatible with a BMI obsession, you say? Yeah, I say, too.)

At the end of the day, this feels to me like just another message from someone with grant money to spend that parents aren't doing their job right. It's an easy position to take, after all, since all you have to do is declare that someone's son or daughter isn't healthy and, gee, they'd really better do something about it, when you aren't tasked with or even interested in offering concrete assistance or solutions. At least a vision or hearing test comes with some way to deal with the problem.

I don't see an opt-out for parents who do not wish their children to participate in the Growth Screening Program. So I plan on one of my own - an unopened letter, filed directly in the compost heap.

Many thanks for the thoughtful commments to my last post. In addition to those posted here I recieved several e-mails and everyone who shared their thoughts has given us much to consider. With more thinking time, I'll be posting a follow-up - one that will address the crazy privilege involved in even having such a problem. Of course, the utter ridiculousness associated with a white, affluent, Christian family pondering what might happen if they stepped outside the norm for a spell, well, let's just say that having read my last post I'm beginning to understand why my friends and relations are sick to death of the subject.

Now then. A bit less navel-gazing is in order, I think. (After wrote this I thought, "What is a blog for, but navel-gazing? If I stopped writing about my preoccupations, what on earth would I write? Short stories?" No. I have no narrative sense to speak of, so as long as I'm here I supposed I ought to make peace with the fact that it's all navel-gazing, all time. Carrying on...)

Among the many pumpkins I picked up for processing into plain puree and pumpkin butter was one lovely specimen, pale orangish with green and yellow stripes. I'd never seen one like it and enthusiastically agreed to put it on our cart when the kids found it nestled among the more standard pie-types where it was the only one of its kind. The pumpkin sat on the kitchen table for more than two months before I was able to do something with it and, once I eventually did, found that inside, too, it was unlike any of the other pumpkins we bought. For one thing, the flesh was almost yellow and had a soft, delicate feel. It pureed beautifully and I am very curious as to how it will work in baking or as a base for a mousse or soup.

And the seeds (which are really what this post is about)! The seeds were green! Oh, I'd seen the hull-less* pepitas in stores and called for in recipes but to actually open a pumpkin and find them is another matter entirely. Their discovery reminded me immediately of a great mole I once had made of ground roasted seeds along with tomatillas - which you know how much I love - and peppers. It's not often I get the urge to make a mole, but with the principle ingredient of pipián (also known as mole verde) staring me right in the face in my very own kitchen, what else could I have done?

So I set about looking online for recipes and procuring the remaining ingredients, sticking to my tried-and-true method of following no one recipe in particular. The result was delicious, although not quite what I remembered of that long-ago dish and not at all what I was shooting for this time. Still, I think the recipe is worth noting, not only for sharing (second only to navel-gazing as a reason to blog) but also so the next time I find myself face to face with an unexpected bounty of pepitas I'm ready. So, to make my version (very low on the authenticity scale) of pipián:

Place one cup of dry green, hull-less pumpkin seeds in a small skillet over low heat. Roast, stirring constantly, for about five minutes and set aside to cool. In the meantime, place three cups of torn green romain lettuce in a food processor. Add in one medium onion, quartered, three large cloves of garlic, one cup of loosely packed cilantro leaves and two small cans of salsa verde tomatilla salsa (or one cup of home-canned). Pulse to process until the onions and lettuce are well-chopped and the mixture is uniformly smooth. Remove to a saucepan and cook over medium heat, adding 1/2 cup chicken broth very slowly to incorporate. Using a clean grinder, mini-chopper or knife, very finely chop the roasted seeds until they are almost a paste and add to the warming saucepan, stirring well to incorporate. Cook until heated through (the sauce may begin to brown, this is o.k.). Use as a cooking marinade for roasting meats (I used chicken) or sauteeing meats and/or vegetables. It's also very good just eaten out of the pan with a spoon, swooning because something so unexpected has resulted yet again in a very delicious experiment.

I've never been one for rebellion. I've also never been one for going-along-to-get-along. My position on most things is that to the extent what I do has no bearing on another, I don't expect comment. I have a pretty strong internal locus of control and don't require much in the way of others' approval. Luckily, Brainiac shares my feelings on the subject of, as he says, the coloring-within-the-lines thing and so we experience very little conflict between us on issues about whether or not we should do or not do X because everyone else does it or doesn't do it.

Does this make sense? What I mean is that we're pretty good at making decisions about stuff on the basis of whether or not it's right for us without worrying if it's not done, too alternative, too mainstream or too whatever. This is not to say that we don't have a sense of community responsibility, just that we'd rather bring our garbage cans in after trash day because it's a desirable thing to do, not because the home owners' association handbook says we must, you know?

There's one issue, though, that is bringing us up short in terms of what is expected versus what we believe to be the best choice for us and it's proving to be harder to manage the more we discuss it, rather than our conversations having an illuminating effect. Real-life friends and relations are sick to death of hearing us talk about it and, for reasons that will become obvious, subject-matter experts cannot be called upon for their objective views. As we have hit a standstill regarding this very large elephant in the room (see it there over in the corner? wearing a lampshade? and chaps?) Brainiac suggested that I take it to the blog, so here I am.

The Boy Wonder is enrolled in a half-day (half-day is a euphamism for 2.5 hours) Kindergarten program at our highly regarded elementary school. He wanted to go on the grounds that it was a guaranteed daily playdate with two of his buddies and has, for the most part, been positive about the experience. Reports back from the classroom (from teachers and other moms) indicate that he is happy and doing well.

But (you knew it was coming, right?) Brainiac and I aren't thrilled with what he's actually doing, school-wise. We're not all in with the Give 'Em Phonics in Preschool crowd or anything, but we've got a kid who started reading (C-A-T cat, S-A-T sat, M-A-T mat) before his fourth birthday and is now doing pretty well with independent reading, who is learning (at his request) how to add double and triple digit numbers, and who thinks that Beowulf is, like, the greatest story ever and read it again Mom! Please understand, I'm not making claims to giftedness or genius or anything like that, merely that he's had the benefit of two fairly geeky parents who spent a loooooong time in school and who have had the time and inclination to bring him and his sister along for the ride.

The activities he's toting home from school bring me up a little short in that I was expecting to have to defend him from too much academics (haven't we all heard that "kindergarten is the new first grade") and instead I'm in the position explaining to him why he's coloring in a picture of the number thirty as part of his math instruction. "Mommy," he said to me not long ago, "I think the plan is that we're going to play now so that we'll have time to learn later in the year."

The school has acknowledged that he is ahead of the curriculum for reading and math and has been quite frank in their plans to do nothing about it. They will not differentiate within the classroom, they will not accelerate, they will not enrich, they will not explain why.

My mother-in-law, a retired second-grade teacher, has pointed out that the kids on either end of the reading and math bell curves tend to join the kids at the top sometime around second grade and has suggested that this may be the basis for the school's disinterest in actually teaching the Boy. Such a norming may be a pedagogical certainty but I think it's actually irrelevant as an explanation - why is it a better educational option to let a kid sit around doing nothing for as long as two years waiting for his skill level to be at the median as opposed to reaching him where he is at the moment? It's clear to us that the Boy is squarely in a gray area where he is one of those kids who can be safely left alone, requiring little attention of any kind. These kids, if they're lucky, reach that top of the bell curve point without hating school as a boring, pointless environment. If they're unlucky, they reach that point with the understanding that being smart and motivated gets you nothing but hassle and make-work. Now there's a lesson I bet isn't in the formal curriculum.

Brainiac and I find this situation sad, angry-making and utterly unacceptable. For his part, the Boy is a little confused as to why he spends his afternoons cutting triangles, learning songs about Mr. M and having his questions about how the intercom system works go unanswered, although he enjoys that it all happens in such a bright and happy environment. He's asked, though, if we could find him another school for next year. "Maybe one that has more science." he suggests.

So. What to do? We're looking at private schools ($15K a year for first grade! and a first grade that's not really better than what we've got), magnet schools and homeschooling. Homeschooling seems to be the best answer, for us and for the Boy. We've essentially been homeschooling him from that moment we realized in the summer before he turned four that he was reading street signs and have continued to respond to his interests with all kinds of books, outings, experiments and activities. He has always responded well and enthusiastically to educational and informative stimuli wherever he finds it.

But man, homeschooling is coloring waaaaaay outside the lines. I have no fear of our ability to provide an excellent and thorough education for our children, none at all. I think, though, that homeschooling comes right up against my ability to do more or less what pleases me, sticks its toe on the line of not caring what people think and dissolving into tears over same and gives me a raspberry. It's one thing to choose a "love me, love my choices" sort of life for oneself but it's quite another to choose it for one's child.

You know, if the Boy Wonder were developing an enthusiasm for some unhealthy thing - a drug, maybe, or not eating enough, I'd move heaven and earth and spend every cent available to me to support him in healing. Why is it so hard to kick what I see as another unhealthy habit - this particular school and perhaps school in general - because it's "what people do". Why am I so afraid to be different about this, to take the plunge, to proclaim loud and proud "we are homeschoolers" when about so many other things in my life I do what I do with no thought or concern as to the general response?

Why is this different?

Entropy Girl was a dragon (me: Are you a nice dragon or a scary dragon? EG: I'm a TWO year old dragon!) and the Boy Wonder went as fireworks.


I decided last year that I would only commit to one time-intensive costume per year. This year was the Boy Wonder's year since he wanted to be fireworks and his sister didn't much care (although she's already announced that next year she will Trick-or-Treat as a puppy - a pink puppy. In a purse.) I wish we had his box all squared (ha!) away before snapping these shots because he really was darling. And he worked very hard on this - the idea was to paint a box that he'd wear hanging from his shoulders and then use gallons of glitter glue to put fireworks on all four sides. Then he wore a bunch of strands of those bendy wire foil star decorating things all twisted up as a kind of hat. Once he got the hang of walking inside the box he was quite happy with the effect.

The dragon came from last year's post-Halloween clearance from Target. And, really, what more could I possibly ask of a toddler's costume than to 1) fit over clothes, 2) eliminate the need of an additional coat and 2) be inexpensive cheap?

In other news, pineapple has been procured and weekend time cleared. We just might end up with some pineapple lime jam before too long. The mother of one of the Boy's friends heard of the plan and said, "Oh, what a wonderful gift that would make!" and all I could think was gift, schmift, this stuff's gonna be for me.

When did Halloween start to require as much effort as Christmas? Actually, now that I think about it, Halloween is a bit more daunting than Christmas at my house since I take full advantage of Advent to think about the season, celebrate and prepare. And, of course, being the Type A planner that I am, I've had Christmas gifts and crafts ready and waiting since May.

But Halloween sneaks up on me and seems to require almost as much effort and planning with the benefit of neither an advent-type season nor socially-sanctioned months-in-advance planning. Getting the kids' costumes ready, the treats baked, pumpkins decorated, the crafts completed, the parties attended and house festive has required the efforts of two parents and one au pair and, lemme tell ya, we've not done everything that we'd been asked to do - AND, the actual trick-or-treating (once upon a time the only Halloween event worth talking about) hasn't even happened yet. Just this morning I told the Director of Entropy Girl's preschool that I had to take a Halloween Hiatus from the major fundraising project on which I am working and that my life is now divided into "before Halloween" and "after Halloween". This, to me, is an alarming state of affairs.

I am more than a little concerned about the escalation of Halloween festivities. I mean, Brainiac and I knew we wanted to give our kids the full Childhood Magic Package™, but the parameters of that goal are expanding all the time. Must every single moment be magical? Can we not, say, put on a pirate suit for one evening, collect a little candy, carve a pumpkin, maybe bob for an apple and call it a day? Why am I - and several parents of my acquaintance - planning for several costumes per child so that they (the kids and the costumes) make it through the fortnight of Halloween merrymaking? One night of magic and wonder is no longer enough, apparently - at least where All Souls are concerned.

So I'm about to pop (another) cranberry orange mini-muffin into my mouth (leftover from Entropy Girl's Sunday School party) to fortify me for today's round of events: costume parades and parties for both children, a visit to my mother-in-law in the hospital, a Halloween party set-up this evening and trying to finish the remaining work on one costume since Entropy girl's other two have not survived the week's round of pumpkin painting and cookie decorating. It's not so much the Souls I'm thinking about as the veil between the world thins tomorrow night, but rather whether my own soul can make it through.

Having completely bunged up the last time I was tagged (wrote a reminder on a sticky, found said sticky on the floor behind my desk when we moved two years later) I feel called upon to respond with haste to the tag suggested by Anyresemblance. No stickies on my watch! At least, not any more stickies.

a) Four job I have had in my life:

- Video store clerk

- Fundraiser

- Commercial voiceover person

- Knowledge Manager (prompting my father to exclaim, "That's not a real job!")

b) Four movies I would watch over and over:

- A Room with a View

- Little Women (the 90s adaptation)

- Little Women (the one with Katherine Hepburn)

- Shirley Valentine

c) Four places I have lived:

- Buffalo, NY

- Canandiagua, NY

- Philadelphia, PA

- Charlottesville, VA

d) Four TV shows I love to watch:

- Alton Brown

- that one on HGTV where the people look at three houses and decide which one to buy

- Scrubs

- Uh..that's it. I don't think I have four, unless I can name the old Max Headroom series which is regretably not available on DVD

e) Four places I have visited:

- Berlin

- Vienna

- San Francisco

- Osh Kosh, Wisconsin

f) Four websites I visit daily:

- BBC

- CNN

- Weather.com

- Gawker.com

g) Four of my favorite foods:

- Melted cheese on toast

- Nutella on challah

- Banana yogurt

- Homemade mac-and-cheese

h) Four places I would like to be right now:

- A hot bath (in a bathroom not having to be cleaned by me)

- The kitchen

- On a trail in the middle of a yellow-leaved fall forest

- A fabric store, with a gift card

i) Four bloggers I'd like to tag:

- My sister, because I want to see what she says, to see if I already know.

- La Femme Follette, although she doesn't strike me as a taggy sort of girl - maybe if we all ask nice?

- Meg, because I think she'd be cool to know and her recipes always work.

- VoirDire SubCulture, because she and I lead lives of geographic proximity and I think she'd have interesting answers,

In Blue Jelly, Debby Bull writes of her efforts to pull herself out of a post-relationship depression through domestic achievement in general, and canning in particular. I read the book many years ago, I think in the early stages of my pregnancy with the Boy Wonder, and remember not thinking much of it at the time. I don't know what happened to my copy - given to a friend, perhaps, or donated or maybe sold on Half.com but in any case it's gone. Kind of wish I still had it, though, because that theme has been on my mind lately.

Looking back through my archives I see that I am most productive, canning-wise, when I am happy. The boiling water bath, the knife work, the slog of sterilizing and filling jars - it all serves to make me yet happier, to have an outlet for my mental and physical energies. I like the creative aspects, too. Thinking of new (to me, at least) uses for, say, pink grapefruit marmalade is fun. If happiness is a required state for me to fully express myself creatively - with canning as my primary medium and other domestic pursuits secondary - I think I've got a really good explanation for why we've been not so much on the canning around here.

It's said that realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Let us then give three cheers for being conscious of what might just be sadness or what might be an actual depression. Last year at this time, Brainiac and I were trying to extricate ourselves from his graduate school, trying to get back to the Philadelphia area and just generally trying to salvage what was left of our sense of self after a rather poorly executed try at life in Charlottesville. I think we - or at least I - thought that once we got out of that house and back where we feel we belong everything else would just fall into place as if we'd never left. Of course, that could not possibly happen. You can't return to a life you've stepped out of, because that life no longer exists.

I still long for my pre-move house. I miss our church, the park down the street, the friends we'd started to make, everything. I've not really dealt with that sense of loss - perhaps because I thought that the loss would be temporary, that it was all just a matter of undoing the move to Virginia. And now I'm also faced with the ending of what I had thought would be a lifelong friendship, the departure of the BFF from my life - without anger or rancor, just both of us moving onto other things. I think a fight would be easier.

So. Blue Jelly, indeed. If canning while sad brought Debby Bull back 'round to happiness, perhaps it can work for me, too. It's apparent that I'm not naturally inclined to start new projects from within the veil of sadness but maybe doing so would trigger some kind of muscle-memory of happiness - Oh! my brain might say, "We only do this when we're happy, so happy we must be."

Remember that pineapple lime jam I was going to make? Yeah, me too.

Tonight's entry will serve as a way to avoid the pumpkin that is currently sitting on my kitchen table awaiting not carving, but processing. It's pumpkin butter time and as much as I really, really want the output that actually doing the work will bring I am having trouble getting to it. It's been that kind of week.

Tonight Brainiac - who is having motivation problems of his own - and I attempted to reboot by heading out to dinner without the kids. We needed some thinking time and space to evaluate some of the crossroads (not enough to have a single crossroad - no, we seem to collect them) at which we find ourselves. In the words of Ferris Bueller, life moves pretty fast and we were having trouble finding time to sit down and hash stuff out. Nothing bad or icky but important nonetheless. I feel better for having sat across a quiet table and shared our thoughts on the subject. Of course, the duck potstickers and chevre gnocchi didn't hurt.

This week I finally opened a jar of this summer's dilly beans. Quite nice, as always. That dilly recipe is so dependable that it's kind of reassuring. How many things in life always come out pretty much as we expect, just about every time? Not at all a bad thing when staring down one or two of the aforementioned crossroads.

Some time ago I received an e-mail from a nice woman named Renee Pottle asking if I maybe would like to take a look at her cookbook I Want My Dinner Now!, published by Hestia's Hearth. She explained that she wrote the book after a long career in Home Economics and teaching to help harried families eat healthier dinners. Seeing as the topic is on my mind almost constantly I happily agreed and a short while later a copy arrived in my mailbox.

Like other books with similar themes (the best known of which may be Saving Dinner) the book is aimed squarely at moms who probably have something other than cooking that they'd like to be doing or who find the job taxing. Ms. Pottle cleverly includes sixteen weeks of menus, shopping lists of basic pantry items and a chapter of rudimentary recipes all designed to get a kitchen up to speed, as it were, as well as good kitchen safety and hygeine information. These basics are covered quickly, but thoroughly, and a beginning cook will find them understandable and easily incorporated into a daily routine.

The recipes themselves are well laid out and written for either two or six servings, a nice touch, and organized into chapters with descriptive - albeit cutesy - titles like "Let's Use Those Appliances" and "Throw It In the Oven". It's evident that Ms. Pottle leans toward a solid, middle-American sensibility with regards to food. There is nothing particularly challenging, but slight touches of the exotic in the form of mild curries, the inclusion of rice noodles and Thai spices keep things from becoming too pedestrian.

I warned Ms. Pottle that I wouldn't write about the book unless the recipes I tried actually worked. To a one, they did. Many of the recipes don't fit into my family's taste at all - there are many in the sweet-and-sour and fruit-with-pork vein, which I do not care for at all - but those we did try worked well. Steve's Jambalaya was quite nice, not to mention easy, as was the ziti with bacon - a sort of riff on carbonara. None of the recipes has overlong lists of ingredients, great for a developing home cook, and the instructions are very clear. Someone looking to learn a few basics from a non-threatening source with no foodie agenda could do very well with I Want My Dinner Now as a sort of primer on the subjects of variety, technique and just generally how to get started.

I have two issues with the text, neither of which really take away from the book's overall goals. One has to do with the inclusion of ingredients like dried, minced onion and instant minced garlic. Ms. Pottle recommends them on the grounds that onion and garlic don't keep well, an assertion that startles me as I keep both around quite successfully for months at a time. Sure, proper storage conditions are important and I think it would have been great for readers to have been informed as to what they are. She steers clear of processed foods in general, which is great, but I wish she would have gone a little farther in this regard.

The second issue has to do with the thorny subject of authenticity. Long-time readers know that I am not a bugaboo on this subject although I do appreciate a glance in its direction. (This may be a good time to introduce the Hot Water Bath Authenticity Scale, with Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade Fame at zero and Madhur Joffrey representing authenticity as a concept at ten. I am about, oh, say, a six or seven.)



I Want My Dinner Now makes no claim whatsoever to presenting authentic anything, so I realize it's not entirely fair to judge the book on such terms. Even so, a recipe for paella that doesn't include - or even mention - saffron kind of bothers me since saffron is kind of the whole point. Now, I've certainly made paella-esque things in my time, rice dishes that contained, say, chicken instead of seafood and no saffron (mostly on budgetary grounds) and I have no problem with the inclusion of a similar recipe here. My objection is that no effort is made to explain what paella really is, or why it's been altered for the book, perhaps for reasons of cost, skill or accessibility to a harried or beginning home cook - all perfectly valid and simply not addressed. Similar lapses are present for the curries, a "Thai" chicken which includes salsa, as well as something called a Ratatouille Bake, which features seasoned stuffing mix. In my opinion, if one is going to adapt or Americanize well-known and well-loved international recipes, one really ought to explain why.

Neither of my complaints is worth passing the book by altogether, though. Renee Pottle has accomplished what many cooks really want to do (including, if I may add, Amanda Hesser, as she describes in an essay in Cooking for Mr. Latte) by creating a repertoire of solid, dependable, enjoyable dishes to return to again and again. A developing home cook or even a reluctant family chef looking to make the job easier may well find a lot to like in I Want My Dinner Now And I am certainly going to make that Jambalaya again - the kids loved it.

It appears that comments have gone haywire again. I'll add it to my list of things to worry about and see what can't be done. In the meantime, I've got a new e-mail address. At least I can say I got something done today!

ETA: Wow, look at me go. Comments fixed and even the archives are back. I'd love to take credit but apparently choosing a new template will do this for a person. Now off for more work avoidance to fix my links. Rock on little blogger!

A thousand apologies, Internet friends. I just cannot figure out this Beta Blogger thing and every day brings a fresh new blogging hell. It has been rough. Press on, though, shall we?

As I type I am sitting (alone!)in a Wegman's internet cafe place, sipping a decaf gingerbread latte (oh my God I have hit coffee bottom with this one - absolutely no coffee cred left it seems - but wow is it delicious) and enjoying a spot of their free wireless. Despite the pain eminating from my ankles, knees, hips, wrists and back from last night's 2 a.m. fall down the stairs I must say that this whole set-up is rather nice. It would be nicer if I had an Advil or three, but no complaints.

I had planned to finally post that review of I Want My Dinner Now but I think I will do that tomorrow. Instead, I want to share the following, with the review coming later this week (I promise. No, really, I swear.):

Entropy Girl and the Boy Wonder both have swimming lessons on Saturday morning. Entropy Girl's are a half hour, and she is the oldest kid in the class, at 32 months. Most of the other little "pikes" in the "pike and parent" class are anywhere from nine through 24 months. Anyway, at every class the teachers have us stand in a circle in the shallow end holding our babes and ask a question about the children. The first week it was the kids' names and birthdays and the second week was their favorite food - you know, pretty benign get-to-know-you stuff. Two weeks ago we were asked for favorite games. Fair enough. Entropy Girl likes to play Hungry Hippos and have pretend tea parties. Little Shaney likes her toy ponies, Everitt likes balls and so on and so forth. We get to the last dad in the circle who proudly holds his not-yet-toddler in front of him, clears his throat, beams and proclaims "Atticus loves flashcards!"

I was sure he was being ironic and didn't bother to stifle my guffaw. Turns out he was most definitely not being ironic and shot me dirty looks for the rest of the session. This week he stared right at me, holding my gaze as if daring me to laugh, while he answered the question as to favorite television shows thusly: "Atticus prefers books to television. He finds them more stimulating." Holding to the community spirit of the YMCA, I held my giggle and merely rolled my eyes. No doubt next week's question will involve career aspirations and we will learn that Atticus is scheduled to sit for the bar.

Today we hosted the Boy Wonder's sixth birthday party. In the event that my admitedly rudimentary cake decorating skills do not make this obvious, this was a NASA-themed party. This cake is meant to resemble the moon, although without the lunar landing module you would be forgiven for not quite getting that.

Sigh. My baby is six. This has been rather hard on me, perhaps because there's the whole "official school-age" thing, too. I don't know. In any case, the party was enjoyed by all, "all" in this case meaning seven kids ages five and six. The adults present are all now quite exhausted.

Because we have apparently entered the birthday party = a couple hours childcare zone with this event, I didn't plan on lots of adult entertainment as I have in previous years. This year's birthday party philosophy dictates that the kids must be kept moving for the entire two hours and under no circumstances should encounter an unprogrammed second. While lots of unstructured time was quite charming at ages 4 and 5, the amount and variety of trouble a bunch of six year old boys can find alarms me, so for an afternoon that involves drop-off playtime in conjunction with lots of sugar (see also: moon birthday cake) just call me Cruise Director Mommy.



I don't think it can be underestimated the joy that diet coke/mento rockets brings to the pre-K/K crowd (not to mention any geeky parents they might have lurking about). Followed by little foam finger rocket thingies, a paper airplane distance flight contest, a space shuttle pinata and something else I've already blocked out, well, in the words of one guest, "This is a great party! The mess is awesome!" And, really, isn't that the point?

I can't find the "good" digital camera - the one that actually takes pictures without a great deal of negotiation - so I'm delayed yet again in taking pictures of the pickled peppers. They're so much better and hotter than their commercially canned cousins that I really do want to talk about them a bit. And they're so easy that anyone with a few of almost any kind of hot pepper lying around could put them up in a flash. I didn't even use my big canner, just a regulsr old saucepan with a hotpad stuck on the bottom. Soon, then.

I just realized that with my conversion to the new-and-better Blogger upgrade thingie that my archives and internal links no longer appear or work, respectively. I find this maddening and a good example of why I'm often of the School of the Old Ways and am, in the words of the IT industry, a Late Adopter. I find it maddening when the new-and-better creates way more problems than I ever had with the previous stuff and even neglects to solve those problems that I did have. Brainiac finds this lack of adaptability alarming and somewhat annoying but I fail to see why, if I buy a new cell phone that looks exactly like the old one and is made by the same company that the new phone has no operations in common with the old one, resulting in a two-year learning curve that I really could have done without. And so it goes with Blogger, apparently. So I'll figure it out and try to remember that, rather unlike my cell company, Blogger has been good to me and, after all, free (also rather unlike my cell company).

Finally, I'm getting back on track with my food politics ruminations. I was talking with a virtual friend whose family manages all manner of food sensitivities and allergies in addition to the run of the mill preferences that everyone develops. She is an accomplished and creative cook but in her house the preparation of meals can be somewhat less than fun due to the limited number of ingredients with which we can safely work. So we were talking about the privilege associated with not just having an abundance of food, but also a variety of food and our expectations of being able to indulge almost any whim of our tastebuds. This lends an interesting cast to the discussion and one that I'm going to ponder for a spell.

I am tempted to blame the Blogger upgrade thingie (this is the technical term, yes?) for my absence. I'd also love to say that I couldn't post because I was too busy canning pickled peppers and peaches. Then there's also the travel excuse, but that's even flimsier than the others (although I did really can a bunch of peppers, not to mention peaches, and pickles) because I was only away for five days of the last month. No, the lack of posting can be explained by one thing.

I was practicing saying "No." The end of two client projects - one protracted and pleasant, the other intense and rather not pleasant, two quick, ill-planned end-of-summer trips, the start of Brainiac's fall travel season, a friend's scary health news, the start of kindergarten (oh my God, don't get me started on this) and a few other upheavals and I just had to take a month of saying No. No to that next project, no to another weekend trip, no to the blow-out keg kill party, no to anything requiring me to change out of my frayed jeans (by now ready to stand on their own), return phone calls, conduct elaborate and/or painful grooming rituals or make small talk.

It was nice. Of course, I've ended my period of renewal with the sending of Branianc off to a conference, hearing of another friend's scary health news (what? are we getting older or something?), the arrival of an au pair from the Ukraine, the Boy Wonder's birthday and impending party, throwing my sis-in-law and her husband a little to-do to celebrate the arrival of their baby boy, signing up for the pre-school fundraising committee, running afoul of the kindergarten room mothers, talking with a client about a possible long-term project and just generally acting as if the last month hadn't happened at all.

So I may as well blog, right? As it happens, despite the eagerness with which I threw away my newfound peace and the resulting chaos, it appears that some calm is on the horizon (knock wood, salt over shoulder, etc., etc., etc.), which is lucky because a girlfriend of mine has asked me to show her how to make and can applesauce. I'm happy to do so, of course, and then there are Halloween costumes to finish, an article on comparing the various interpretations of the meaning of Classical Education (i.e., chronological history, basis in literature, active Latin/Greek study, and so on) to complete, a book to edit, kids to raise, a house to clean and a life to live. Oh! And some pre-fab dinners to make (I'm scheduled!) and cookbooks to review.

The season of No is over.

More little tidbits about meal assembly joints:

1) They have their own industry association. On the one hand, I can see the need for such an organization - who else to discuss the critical question Is this a fad? No word on the website about how much the answer to this - and other - questions costs. Maybe, like dinner assembly itself, you get the answers for 6 to 12 questions for as little as $200 and change. Hmm. Somehow, I doubt it.

2) Foodmomiac details her experience with Dream Dinners in this series of posts. To be fair, I have looked around for positive reviews of dinner assembly meals other than those published in traditional, mainstream media outlets, to no avail. Lifestyle reporters in particular seem to love dinner assembly, but no word from the food pages. Other than a few negative discussions, of which Foodmomiac was just one, bloggers' mentions seem to be just that they went with friends to one or another such franchise with no follow up as to their feelings about what they ended up eating as a result.

I remain interested in trying a session for myself, in the interests of self-experimentation, of course. Tell me what you think: because I have blogged on this subject and will more than likely do so again, should I share my thoughts, why I'm there and my intention to blog about the experience? I'm not exactly Dooce or Julie here so it's not like my little corner of the internet is going to single-handedly bring down an entire nascent industry simultaneously giving rise to the rebirth of the rice-packet eschewing home cook. (But, goodness, wouldn't that be cool?) I wonder just where the blogger/ever-so-slightly journalist (however faux) line is. Thoughts?

A while back, a commenter asked if I knew of any sort-of home-ec websites for adults or good books that might teach one how to cook. Susie J suggested Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food (which, by the way, has a subtitle that goes "Food + Heat = Cooking", harkening back to another recent post which I wrote before I'd ever really known much about Alton Brown at all) and Shirley Corriher's Cookwise. I don't know anything about either of these books, but I can say with certainty that Sue is a wonderfully accomplished and adventurous cook (not to mention baker) and I think one might do well to heed her advice on the matter.

For my part, I went about things a little differently. One day it was decided I needed to learn to cook. I remember the day - I was a sophomore in college, living off campus with a very glamourous girlfriend in what we thought was a best apartment ever and we decided to give a dinner party. First one of us had to learn to cook something. That I am now writing this blog and she is a chef illustrates just how life-changing the conversation turned out to be.

My point is that sometimes, to learn to book means deciding that one is going to learn to cook and then doing it. I've always held that, gene splicing and hybridizing aside, there is essentially a finite number of ingredients in the world. A huge number, to be sure, but basically finite. Rule out all the things you don't want to eat - for me these include most specialty meats and I don't care what anyone says about it, some fruits and a surprisingly (to me) large number of condiments - and work with what you do want to eat. One you learn some cool things to do with a tomato you pretty much can deal with all tomatoes, no matter the variety. Figure out how to get a batch of bran muffins in the oven, and you've got corn, blueberry, cranberry orange and chocolate chip in the bag, so to speak. The same is true for roasts - beef, pork, chicken, whatever. There are nuances, sure, but the basic principle is the same.

On the way to learning to cook, you may produce some awful stuff. Eat it anyway, learn and move on. I, myself, still cannot make an omelet of any repute but I press on knowing the result will be worth it and the day I can reproduce the gruyere and duck omelet I love at the Black Lab Bistro will be a happy one for me. In the meantime, I eat an awful lot of failed omelets. I also made a lot of cakes before I figured out the basic procedure, starting with yellow cake. Now the whole operation is, so to speak, a piece of cake and I can produce all kinds of cakes in fairly short order. So, unlike, say, ice dancing, which requires some innate talent, becoming a reasonably good home cook just requires practice. More on the order of bike riding, I'd say.

One time you'll follow the directions for a basic pasta sauce of roasted tomatoes, basil, garlic and pepper and think, "Well, the texture is all right, but I think it needs less garlic, more basil and maybe some carrot or something to give it body." And you'll try that next time, and then the third time, leave out the basil but include celery and wine and keep going changing a bit each time until you have a sauce you love and can make in your sleep. Along the way, you'll use it not only over plain pasta but atop toasted bread as an hors dourve or loosened with broth as a soup. Next, remembering the tomato sauce experiments, you'll wonder if you can roast an eggplant in the same way and find out that yes! you can and not only that, but you can grill it, too and - hey! - can tomatoes be grilled? What about thyme instead of basil and white pepper instead of black? And on you go, like a good kitchen scientist, using the results of one thing to inform the next. Some stuff will suck and some will be great, but that's how life goes, isn't it?

I also recommend starting slow. Don't try to produce a four course meal for dinner tomorrow night. Make one thing and buy or open boxes for the rest. And be reasonable - starting with Vitello Tonnato is not a hot idea, but maybe a seasoned veal chop would be great. Grill a chop a few times to get a feel for how veal works for you and how it reacts to heat and your pans and your touch and, before you know it, that Vitello Tonnato is in reach.

So I think this is how you have to start, if you haven't learned in home-ec or at your mother's elbow. Take a deep breath, ignore your woefully inadequate kitchen (believe me, there are very few adequate kitchens in the world and even fewer get used with any regularity - well-outfitted cooking spaces seldom turn up in restaurants for some reason, preferring to habitate in those really big houses that get built when farms get bought up), make peace with your single mixing bowl and one knife, banish the little voice that's telling you that cooking is a pain and you never learned before so you won't learn now and, in the words of a greater writer than I, just do it. Today a baked apple, tomorrow an apple pie and next week an Apple-Rosemary Tart.

Greetings from suburban Freakinhotadelphia. When the heat index climbed to 115 yesterday - and this ain't no dry heat, friends - we caved and installed our second window air conditioner. We can now shut off three of the main living spaces (like many big old houses, ours has multiple doors off of each room) and remain in relative comfort. Leaving the now-cooled Pullman-style rooms requires yanking open a paint- and heat-swollen door to the sounds of everyone else yelling, "Shut the door!" and gasping for air like a carnival goldfish being transferred from its baggie.

But now the kitchen, dining room and living room are cooler and comfortable, if somewhat messier, what with the toys, books, and DVD that have emigrated from the house's uncooled areas. Having the newly cooly inviting kitchen I decided to can the four pounds of cherries that I pitted over the weekend. Because they were already pitted, the entire operation was a short one - maybe 20 minutes, not including processing. And, cherries are one of the very easy fruits to process, because their liquid can be syrup, fruit juice or water. I used the soaking water in which I stored the pitted fruit in the fridge, and which had a bit of lime juice added to it to help preserve color. So, even more than pickles or jam, cherries are an easy-peasy project for novice canners, using as little as the fruit and water.



I gave my love a cherry.... Jeez. I hate it when I'm a sucker for the obvious joke. Ah, well.

You know how, on The New Yankee Workshop, Norm Abram always interrupts the project of the day to remind his viewers to always read the instructions that come with their power tools and to wear safety goggles? Here's the Hot Water Bath version of that PSA: Every box of canning jars comes with basic canning instructions. Be sure to read and understand them before you're standing in front of a pot of boiling sugar syrup, jam or pickling brine. You can also read this for an excellent primer on the subject. Don't worry, it's not as involved as it looks, you just need to be a little careful and, once you get the hang of it, you, too, can put up eight half-pints of cherries in about 20 minutes.

Good? Good.

To save range space, I sterilized my jars in the oven and simmered the rings and lids. Because I had decided to use the water and lime juice mixture as the canning liquid, so drained the cherries into a pot, added a couple cups of water to make sure that I had enough, and brought the liquid to boil. The cherries themselves were raw packed (that is, put into the jars without heating) and had the boiling liquid added to within a half an inch of the rims. A quick wipe of the rims with a paper towel dipped in the water simmering with the lids, placement of the lids themselves and a good tightening, and the only thing left to do was wait for the canner to come to a good boil. The four pounds of pitted cherries resulted in 7 half-pints of canned fruit. Yum!



Now. What to do with it all? I'm not totally sure. I bet they'd be really great on ice cream, drained or cooked in syrup and with a little Frangelico added in. And I've never eaten cherry crisp, but it sounds great and even better without the commercial pie filling. They could be drained and chopped for muffins, or to add to pancake batter or salads or goodness knows what else. Hmmm...what else?

So that was my evening. What did you do?

Among the converging deadlines I mentioned in my last post was that of preparing for and executing a family vacation to Wisconsin. Part of the time was spent in a small rented cottage which, although comfortable, boasted the most comprehensive collection of broken and/or incomplete kitchen tools I have ever seen. The second portion of the trip was spent in a tent, looking at more airplanes in more varieties than I thought possible.

The planes were fine, even to an aviation non-enthusiast such as myself, and we found out that even the screaming engines and full afterburners needed for a B-1 Lancer's sixty degree climb almost directly overhead were not enough to wake Entropy Girl from her daily very-late naps. The tent was not fine and probably the less said about it the better. I did mention to Brainiac that he had hit the trifecta of things you don't want when trying to convince the wife that camping is fun: a night of cold, a night of wind and a night of electrical storms.

Now that we're home and I am caught up on the laundry, I thought I'd get back to the topic of cooking and how we're to manage it if we have or want to have, like, a life and stuff. The truth is, I don't know. That is, I know how to manage it for me but not for anyone else. I do know, though, that the only way to figure it out is to get in there and do some cooking.

I became frustrated on our trip after meeting a woman who bragged that she "never, ever cooks". I thought her comment hyperbole until questioning revealed that her kids serve themselves from bags of fruit (fine enough, I guess), bread and peanut butter (um, o.k.) and pre-packaged "complete" lunches (I'm feeling faint) stashed in the fridge. The cupboards contain a variety of commercial snacks and that's that. The kids eat when the kids are hungry out of hand or off paper plates and their mom is pretty pleased that she's found a way to feed them with no effort or engagement whatsoever. I suppose this is, in fact, one way to deal with the issue athough I do kind of feel bad for the kids. They're missing out on so much - the communion of the dinner table, learning the life skills of even basic cooking and food selection, experiencing the lessons in civility that come from standing next to adults and assisting in the preparation and serving of a meal (setting the table is an excellent contribution to the family meal and can be accomplished by kids as young as three) and even the simple enjoyment that comes from learning to appreciate a variety of foods in a variety of preparations. While it's true that their bodies are being fed, is it too cheesy to wonder if their minds, souls and hearts are, too?

But I think that family is an extreme case. Most of us fall somewhere else on the family cooking bell curve and really just need a few simple ideas to make it easier to bring young ones into the kitchen and have everyone make it out again sooner rather than later and with something really yummy to eat (and not too much mess).

For my part, I've discovered that couscous, orzo and pastina are my quick-cooking friends and that there's no way to overestimate the convenience of having pizza dough on hand (notice I did not say pizza crust - my recipe for dough follows and it's insanely easy). I'll also stir fry virtually anything and now regard the exploration of all manner of quiches - both the authentic and faux - as a spiritual path. Then, of course, there are soups and stews and pastas and more kinds of pierogie/empanada/ravili things than I can count.

In other words, fast and easy don't automatically mean junk any more than complicated means good. (As evidence I offer Insalata Capese vs. tete de veau.) Of course, there are lots of hard to make things that are wonderful, and many more dishes that require a score (or more) of ingredients and three days and could break your heart with their awesomeness but these are not what we're talking about here. What we want are some basic dishes that can be varied by season or mood and that are fast and delicious and, above all, real and without unpronounceable contents and packaging that weighs more than the "food" itself.

But how to get started? That's for another post, one full of cookbook recommendations and other suggestions. For now, here's how I make pizza dough. I try to keep at least one pizza's worth in the freezer at all times, because it thaws quickly in the fridge or in panic mode in a bowl of warm water. Like most good things, there are no hard and fast rules:

Put a packet or two teaspoons of yeast along with a pinch of white sugar in a two-cup measure, and fill to two-cups with water that is quite warm, but not hot. Allow to sit for 10-15 minutes so that the yeast comes alive and becomes foamy. In a large bowl, mix together four cups of flour (this can be unbleached white or whole wheat, or a combination of both - I've also added in a bit of chick pea flour with good results) and a teaspoon of table salt. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in about a quarter cup of the yeast mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon, adding more yeast/water as needed until a dough forms and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until it is smooth and pliable. Now allow the dough to rest for ten minutes. Divide as desired into however much you need to make pizzas as big as you want and place into freezer bags. Press down to flatten the dough and remove air from the bags.

Shhh....hear that? No, not that. That. Know what that is? It's angels singing because she's back and blogging again. You can't see me, but I'm smiling. Ear to ear.

Do you ever listen to that NPR show Car Talk? At the end of every show, the hosts - whose names I can never remember except that they're onomatopoeiaish - say something like, "Well, you've done it again and wasted another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk..." except I don't think it's a waste of time to listen to them. Even the kids think it's a funny show and Brainiac gets a kick out of finding ways he disagrees with them, car repair-wise. One time they even had on a (-nother, I swear it wasn't me) woman whose husband was irrationally obsessed with old Mercedes, so I even get a lot out of it maritally-speaking. Something for everyone, you know?

Anyway, my point is that somehow I've gone and done it again. Various unrelated deadlines seem to have converged on me in such a way as to make writing a little bit of a not-so-much activity. Just for a spell, though. I'll be back and more of the why-we-approach-cooking-this-way rant and book reviews and comments on another admitedly tagential thread brought about by reading Amy Sutherland's Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America. Oh! And ideas about cooking with kids and quick things one can make for dinner that aren't 1) from box or can and 2) don't make one's family run screaming out to the Tahoe begging to be taken anywhere, just so long as there's french fries.

On her first visit here (Hi!), Caro asked, "Do you really write about canning sometimes?"

Um, yes. Well, sometimes pretty much covers it. But yes. I've got a canning list as long as this post and am actually planning to make a dent in it after the deadline convergance problem is cleared up. And some girlfriends and I have a canning bee planned for next month, so there's that, too. So, yes, we do talk about canning here and welcome, Caro, because with hardcore harvest just weeks away, I think we're about to have some fun.

Is it July already? My, how time flies when you're busy spreading aloe on your sunburn and picking charred bits of fireworks cardboard out of the zucchini patch.

Anyway. For those of you who celebrated the Fourth of July I hope the day was a haze of happiness, as only a holiday dedicated to freedom, beer and (irony!) chips and salsa can be. For those of you who had, uh, Tuesday, I hope it was similarly lovely.

Last night as I put dinner on the table I realized that I had once again committed one of my most hated culinary crimes. Specifically, everything I had prepared so lovingly was a shade of white - the mahi mahi, the orzo, the sauteed (peeled) squash and onions, the sourdough bread. Ugh. A delicious dinner, sure, but not terribly appetizing on the whole and quite disappointing. The looks of food go a long way in our enjoyment and a tasty meal that is also beautiful is much nicer than one without visual interest.

So, yes, recent rants notwithstanding, I am not perfect cooking-wise. Last night's dinner was wonderful for ease and quickness of preparation. But in my zeal to make something nice and simple - but also nutritious and yummy - on a busy, hot day I somehow lost track of another food virtue that I hold dear. Ah, well. Tonight I'm making nachos with seasoned meat and refried beans left over from Wednesday, as well as the garden's first tomatoes and jalapeños.

Nachos make a great quick meal, especially on a mid-summer night when you'd kind of rather go out to eat (and would probably order nachos) but won't because there's a long vacation coming up and you're trying to save money in the face of $3.50/gallon gas. Plus, although not super good for you, they can be made more healthful by adding lots of tomatoes and black beans, being somewhat moderate on the cheese and subbing drained plain yogurt for the sour cream. Nachos have the added benefit of making my kids (and, lets be honest, Brainiac) think that they've gotten away with something, dinner-wise. Here's how I do mine:

Spread a bag of white tortilla chips on a 9 X 13 rimmed cookie sheet/jelly roll pan. Top chips with seasoned ground beef (leftover from tacos, say), refried beans, chili, drained canned black beans - or some combination. On top of the beans and meat, sprinkle diced tomatoes and finely sliced jalapeños (you can also use pickled jalapeño slices), finely diced red onion and a few spoons of salsa and finally grated cheese - I use a combination of cheddar and monteray jack - use what you like and melts well). Cook in a very hot oven (say, preheated to 400) just until the cheese has melted - any longer and the chips could get soggy. When done, place the entire pan in the center of the table (on top of several tea towels laid down for protection), along with bowls of more salsa, drained plain yogurt* and guacamole.

* The yogurt doesn't strictly have to be drained, but doing so makes it seem a little more sour creamish. I drain mine in a paper towel lined mesh strainer for about 20 minutes while I prepare and cook the nachos. There are special draining tools you can buy for this job, but they seem kind of pointless to me when they can be replicated so easily and cheaply.

In my last post I promised I would talk a bit about those dinner-assembly franchises like Let's Dish, Dream Dinners and My Girlfriend's Kitchen. They're popping up everywhere like the proverbial toadstools. The Washington Post recently printed an excellent primer on the subject (you may need to register for this, try BugMeNot for help). Quickly, the idea is that one makes an appointment to go collate ingredients for 12 or so recipes from pre-prepared ingredients by following recipes posted at each station. At the end of assembly, the meals - which serve 4 to 6 - are put into freezer-friendly containers and carted home. For about $200, the assembler has roughly two weeks of meals and, at least according to the marketing, has enjoyed a lovely wine-filled girls' (for, lets face it, the men of the house aren't really being spoken to here) night out cavorting with friends and yet still managing to fulfill her duty to family and home.

I find the idea behind these stores very attractive. Who wouldn't love to cook with friends, share the work, double the fun and come out of the whole event with delicious food to eat for days to come? Sounds lovely to me. Actually, it must sound lovely to a lot of women, because since Dream Dinners opened back in 2003 the industry has racked up billions in annual sales and competition has sprung forth like zucchini in July.

I can't help but wish, though, that moms had social permission to go out with friends without having to also multitask their way to through one of the most burdensome household tasks - making yet another dinner on yet another busy day. There seems to be something a little naughty about moms heading out on their own to think only of themselves for a couple hours. Or is going out with friends reserved for those selfish singles who viewed Sex and the City as aspirational television? There is something culturally going on that does not really love to see mothers indulging in some non-family related downtime - I guess I'm not surprised that womens' social time has now expanded to include dinner preparation duties. Moreover, I don't think it's too picky to point out that where individuals are pictured on the companies' websites, they are white. "Family" seems to be fairly narrowly defined here as caucasian, two-parent and fairly affluent. And, please, don't get me started on the "The best idea since the invention of the wife(R)" tagline - Brainiac nearly collapsed of rant-induced boredom the last time I even mentioned it.

But even beyond the socioeconomic issues, I'm troubled that businesses that are positioning themselves as offering solutions to a family problem may well actually be worsening a social problem. Most of the major franchises don't allow children to attend an assembly session - citing local and state laws about children in commercial kitchens - and some of them only permit couples under certain conditions and at certain times. So even while these companies are claiming to make things easier for women responsible for meal preparation, I think they are really reinforcing the social pressures that resulted in women maintaining sole responsibility for feeding their families in the first place. A woman who turns to any one of these establishments with frequency may well get food on the table but she also is going to have family members who are not learning to cook and share the job but who are also completely removed from grocery shopping and preparing food for cooking. It's one thing to not really love to cook or not totally get how it's done, but it's another altogether different story to not even be sure how to chop a fresh bell pepper, tear lettuce or know which end of a scallion is used. Or what constitutes a good buy on chicken, for that matter. Dinner assembly out of the house increases the risk that our kids' generation will be even less connected to their food than our own.

I want to be clear about one thing. I am not blaming women in general or dinner assembly customers specifically for their dinner-related issues. I know all too well what it's like to stare into the fridge at 6:30 p.m. wondering what on earth to feed the cherubs dancing about my legs chanting that they're staaaaarrvvvviinngggg. And I've certainly known the frustration associated with paying good, hard-earned cash for a larder full of fresh vegetables, meats, fruits and lovely condiments only to throw away shameful amounts because we were too busy to cook and eat at home and so grabbed a dog at Target. Further, I understand more than I care to the pressures associated with owning a lovely kitchen in a nice exurban town, only to have to leave it empty all day while out paying for it. Really, I know and know there really is a problem here in search of a solution. But this solution isn't really because it will only make the problem worse for having institutionalized not addressing the root causes of the dinner problem and making it o.k. to leave them unaddressed as long as food's on the table and mom's getting out once in a while.

It would be fair to challenge me on what I'd recommend to a busy woman with bacon to bring home if she can't quite find the time or energy to fry it up in the pan. If not Dream Dinners or it's siblings, then what? Well, as it happens I do have a few ideas. And, within the next three weeks, four dinner assembly joints are to open within 10 miles of my house. Despite the impression I may have given, I'm keeping an open mind and plan to give one or two a try. Like I said, I do find something attractive about the idea of hanging out with other women, having a laugh or two, and cooking up many evenings' worth of dinners. I just wish that instead of doing it at My Girlfriend's Kitchen I was doing it at, you know, my girlfriend's kitchen.